The COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to the connections across gender, race, and class. As the New York Times noted, this crisis has a predominantly nonwhite, female face.
Even before the pandemic, women of color often stood at the intersection of multiple barriers. At the top, under 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women of color. Throughout the workforce, black women are paid 62 cents for every dollar that a white man earns. At the bottom, low-income workers (predominantly women) constitute almost 70% of the workers in jobs that pay less than $10/hour, and Blacks and Latinas are overrepresented in those jobs. Lower-income women are far more likely to lack sick leave and access to quality child care than are wealthier women.
These statistics make a difference to people’s lives during the pandemic. As an article in the Harvard Business Review observed, women and minorities may be “hardest hit,” possibly because they are more likely to hold jobs in industries, such as retail, hospitality, recreation, and manufacturing, which are at an increased risk of layoff. The May 8 Labor Department report shows that Blacks and Hispanics have the highest unemployment rates in the country, and women have a higher unemployment rate than men. While 13% of White respondents have already skipped paying a bill, that is true for 37% of Black/African-American respondents and 39% of Hispanic/Latino respondents, according to a recent poll by Data for Progress.
On the other hand, many women of color work in jobs deemed essential, so they can be at higher risk of getting sick; consider that mothers who work in industries on the frontline are more likely to be women of color.
In fact, Blacks have been hit disproportionately by COVID-19, with hospitalization and death rates far higher than those of whites. There is even some anecdotal data suggesting that people from vulnerable populations who have COVID-19 symptoms may not be referred for testing as frequently as their White counterparts.
Catherine Powell, a law professor at Fordham, observes how the “Color of Covid” highlights numerous race-based inequalities, ranging from jobs to health care to the broader racial justice paradoxes of American life. As she shows, people of color are more likely to be unemployed and yet also more likely to be those essential workers who must stay on their jobs, particularly in lower-skill jobs, such as those at Amazon fulfillment centers. Given this duality, she argues, COVID-19 “has forever colored our understanding of not only the crisis of contagion, but also the ethics of community, care, and concern.”
Pointing to intersections of race, gender, and class, Powell notes the cost of this health crisis for women of color, “in particular and the way it lays bare underlying gendered and raced inequalities.” Women of color dominate in domestic work, yet have no job security and are not working due to the pandemic. (After Powell’s opinion piece on these matters appeared in CNN, her “Color of Covid” framing spawned a #colorofcovid hashtag and provided the basis for a CNN special hosted by Van Jones and Don Lemon.)
So what can be done beyond the current Congressional efforts to provide some minimal financial support during the pandemic? Even that relief, as the Washington Post reported today, is incomplete for hourly workers, such as those employed at airport food and retail establishments.
“In the short term, Congress needs to avoid shifting the burden of the current pandemic onto the backs of those people least positioned to bear it,” said Spencer Overton, a professor at GW Law School and the President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that focuses on Black communities. “That means ensuring for essential workers adequate safety standards and personal protective equipment, disclosure about COVID-19 in the workplace, testing, adequate paid leave, medical care, and accountability for employer decisions that jeopardize the health of workers.” Many warehouse and delivery workers report they have seen no change in cleaning or protective measures.
Many of the disparities reflect long-standing racial equity problems, notes Overton. Those can only be solved by policies such as better health care, equitable educational opportunities, improved fair housing, and employment opportunities. Overton adds that “racial disparities in wealth—which are tied to housing segregation, predatory lending, unchecked algorithmic bias, inadequate access to capital, and laws designed with insufficient regard to the needs of communities of color—must also be addressed.”
While Congress has instituted special paid leave protections through the end of the year, workers otherwise receive no paid leave except in a minority of states; expanding paid leave protections does not just help prevent the spread of future pandemics but helps provide economic security.
In the short term, efforts to improve food security and unemployment insurance are critical. The Joint Center has also urged Congress to include access to affordable broadband internet in future COVID-19 stimulus packages. Providing child care options may be particularly important for Black and Hispanic women, who are more likely than white women to be single heads of households. Overton also urges improved voting by mail and safe in-person voting procedures.
The only potential silver lining is that the pandemic calls attention to these longstanding problems and may encourage creativity in developing a better response that, as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes in The New Yorker, is not just superficial but is instead systemic.
